Warburg Pincus-backed Hygiena evaluates sale

More than four years into its investment, Warburg Pincus has kicked off a sale process for Hygiena, a global provider of food safety and life science testing, according to three sources familiar with the matter. 

Houlihan Lokey and Citi are providing sell-side financial advice on the process, which has already fielded interest from large private equity funds.  

Conversations remain in the early stages and first-round bids have not yet been submitted.  

Sources placed Hygiena’s EBITDA at about $76 million, while two others said a transaction ought to produce at least a high teens EBITDA multiple. 

Hygiena, headquartered in Camarillo, California, manufactures and sells a broad range of rapid microbial detection, monitoring, and identification systems and devices to a wide range of industries. The global company serves the food and beverage, healthcare, hospitality, pharmaceuticals and personal care industries.

In the business of environmental sanitization and disinfection services for various end-markets, the business has performed well through covid, sources told PE Hub. 

For example, Hygiena’s cleaning verification products can tell you in as little as 10 seconds if a surface has been cleaned properly using ATP, its website states. 

Since Warburg’s July 2016 investment, Hygiena has built out its portfolio of capabilities and fueled growth through M&A, starting with the 2017 carve-out of DuPont Diagnostics, the global food safety diagnostics business of DuPont. 

Hygiena followed with the acquisition of Biomedal Diagnostics Food Safety in 2018, and in 2019, scooped up Helica BioSystems. 

Today the global company has offices in Wilmington, Delaware, Mexico, Spain, Canada, the United Kingdom and China, with over 80 distributors in more than 100 countries worldwide. 

Spokespeople with Warburg and Houlihan declined to comment. Representatives with Citi and Hygiena could not immediately be reached.